An international team of researchers exhaustively re-examined artifacts found at a long-abandoned and almost forgotten archaeological site known as Shiyu, located in northeastern China.
This treasure trove of objects made 45,000 years ago, located in Shanxi province, was discovered in 1963 but abandoned for several decades. Now it will be recognized as the place with the oldest presence of ‘Homo sapiens’ ever found on Chinese soil, indicates Ancient Origins.
“Our new study identified an early Upper Paleolithic archaeological assemblage from the Shiyu site in northern China, dating back 45,000 years and including technology from [producción de] blades, spearheads with spikes and handles, long-distance transfer of obsidian and the use of a perforated graphite disk,” said Professor Yang Shixia, first author of the study and researcher at the Academy’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. China Sciences in a statement published by that institution on EurekAlert.
The discovery of a large number of cultural and technological innovations, together with the recovery of a lost human cranial bone in 1963, shed light on the ancient migration of Homo sapiens to East Asia about 45,000 years ago, maintains an article on the research in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
The results of taphonomic (i.e. post-mortem) analysis of mammalian fossils, combined with analysis of stone tool use, indicated that the people of Shiyu were “horseback hunters” equipped with a species of spears, so they had the ability to hunt horses, the statement says.
Shiyu gives us the opportunity to delve into the lives of the skilled hunters of northern China 45,000 years ago, almost 5,000 years earlier than previously thought.
The inhabitants of the region had a remarkably advanced tool set, with a range of innovative Upper Paleolithic tools, such as scrapers, punches and instruments from earlier times, including Middle Paleolithic tools made according to the Levallois method (obtaining blades or points whose shape and dimensions are predetermined by a special preparation of the cores).
The variety and functionality of their tool industry makes it clear that the prehistoric residents of Shiya built a complex and sustainable culture that efficiently exploited the resources available in their region.
This culture would have used a mix of technologies and practices imported from the people’s original lands in Siberia or Mongolia, physical objects acquired through commercial activities, and new inventions and techniques that were unique to that time and place.
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